Shining a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls. Also providing advice for writers, industry news and commentary, and a focus on the weird and wacky things that happen at the fringes of the publishing world.

March 11, 2006

A.C. Crispin - 44 - Choose Your Own Topic - Here's Your Opportunity!

Okay, I confess. I can't think of a single thing to write about on this beautiful spring day. Spring fever has hit my brain and I want to go outside and measure my tulip shoots rather than site here and think up some scam-related words of wisdom. And I know better than to post a recipe or talk about the new book I'm writing!

So...here's the deal: I'm going to devote Post 44 to answering the first, or the first few, writing, publication, or scam-related questions you folks pose. I'll answer as many questions as I can, depending on the complexity of the questions and the answer required.

If I don't know the answer, I'll say so. There are lots of things I don't know. Most of them aren't related to writing or scams, however. (smile)

Here in the UK, I often see an ad in magazines that reads, "Why Not...Be A Writer?" Then there's a blurb about how you can make good money working from home, and it's fun, and blah blah blah.

Basically, it's a creative writing course. (I'd post the link but I don't know if I should). I guess they give some tips on queries and submissions as well.

There are a couple of "testimonials" from writers. I've Googled them, and they are legit-so far as that goes. Is it really legitimate for any writer to endorse ads like that? Isn't the ad at least somewhat misleading, implying that any joe with a computer can earn a living writing, and all they have to do is pay £250 for the "secrets" the class will teach them?

What responsibility do you think writers have when they endorse such things? Even if they found the class helpful, do you think they should be careful about their endorsements and how they are worded? "I got a £25k advance for my novel after completing the course!" is a bit much, is it not-implying that the course is responsible?

On self-publishing: Maybe a commentary on where it works for a small niche in non-fiction and why it's not the same for a novel. I see plenty of articles in newspapers where they talk about how great it is for novelists and then cite non-fiction books as successful examples. I've even seen writers who self-published in the 1800's cited as reasons to go to self-publishing today!

On persistance: One writer, mentioned in a self-publishing article, submitted her full manuscript to a publisher (I ain't going to discuss what was wrong with that) and got a single rejection so she gave up and went to self-publishing.

On scams: This is probably not a pure scam, but it does have some questionable qualities to it--anthologies. There are always calls for papers for anthologies posted online. Some that aren't legitimate are easy to spot--the submitter has spelling and grammatical errors in the advertisement, is too vague, etc. There are people who seem to think they'll get articles from writers for free and then sell it to a publisher to make lots of money for themselves. I submitted to about ten anthologies that appeared legitimate, got accepted in all of them, and only one ever made it to publication. In most cases, simply nothing happened, and when the writers asked what was going on, they were ignored or told not to bother the editor any more. Will be happy to elaborate on some of my experiences if you want. But maybe it would be helpful to have something on what to look for in an anthology and when you should run from it.

Possible idea for comment: when starting out I sent $350 to a web-site that promised information that would give me the “inside track” on finding an agent. What I got was a list of the five top agents in my genre -- the ones who’s lists are full and still get 200+ queries a day. It came with a nice “pep-talk" letter saying my novel (which they’d never seen) was so good that mentioning in my query the little bit of fluff they’d gleaned from Publisher’s Marketplace would make me a shoe-in. Err... never did work. And now think it comes close to being a scam.